Soil amendments provide a primary means for bolstering plant growth. However, significant quantities of applied soil amendments never reach the roots of plants. Instead, they are lost to bulk soil through sorption, diffusion, leaching and degradation. Using existing technology, more nutrients are immobilized by soil than are used by crops, harming both the agricultural industry and the environment.
Monetary costs that result from the loss of soil amendments burden the agricultural industry, and these costs continue to grow as global reserves of phosphate are depleted. Beyond economic harm, loss of soil amendments is detrimental to the environment. Nitrogen used in nutrients increases the emission of reactive gases that contribute to acid rain and smog. Additionally, a percentage of this nitrogen escapes into the atmosphere as nitrous oxide, which has been identified as a greenhouse gas that traps heat at a rate about three hundred times that of carbon dioxide.
Nitrogen and phosphorus from soil amendments also threaten water quality by accelerating the growth of algae and other aquatic plants. Algal blooms kill fish and harm wildlife and livestock through the production of toxins and by reducing the oxygen content of water. Additionally, accelerated growth of algae and other aquatic plants raise the cost and difficulty of water purification.
Liquid diffusion of soil amendments also detriments plant growth. Plants use a large percentage of their photosynthetically-fixed carbon for nutrient uptake. Consequently, much of a root's energy is lost extracting nutrients from the soil against an energy gradient. Reducing nutrient diffusion in soil solution and subsequent energy spent to re-extract these nutrients could thereby reduce root energy expenditures and increase plant growth.
Current soil amendment compositions do not meet the present need for impermeable soil amendment compositions. Essential to current compositions is the mechanism of delivering amendments through the soil to plant roots by dissolving into the soil water solution and subsequent diffusing from the surface of the composition into the surrounding soil environment. The random movement of soil amendments through three-dimensional space unavoidably results in the loss of amendments, like phosphorus and nitrogen, to the surrounding environment.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for a soil amendment composition that provides plant roots with amendments, such as nutrients, pesticides, root attractants, microbes, and combinations thereof, without losses to the surrounding environment attendant existing soil amendment compositions.